... a miscellaneous hodgepodge of various thoughts, loosely held together by the fact that they're all emanating from a single mind. A lighthearted look at the world, a great place to waste a moment or two of your life.

Friday, July 4, 2008

No Longer Stumped!

YEAH! I'm no longer stumped! Here's the area where the stump used to be (over to the right):

And here (below; click the pictures to enlarge, if you care) are the pictures of the final extraction. We'd gotten it to the point where, when we whacked it with the sledge-side of a maul, it would move 4-5 inches. So I went to Lowe's and picked up a chain and a couple of connection links - the best $18.12 I have spent today (well, the $10 we spent on shrimp - which I grilled in aluminum foil in a butter/garlic/spices mixture - was really worth it, too!). Anyway, we'd hacked and hacked, for (literally) weeks and months, and I declared (this morning) that today we would have victory - today would be our independence day from the stump! And we did.

A couple of hours of manual whacking and digging this morning, then (once we got it to the point where it was actually movable - not significantly movable, but enough that we could push on it to make a difference) we went after the chain. Now, I know that a Lexus is not a truck (although the engine is related to the engine in the Tundra, and I even had one of those for a couple of years), but you can still hook a chain to the tow hook on the rear and pull out a stump with it. The stump was heavy, so I dragged it with the car/chain over to our "big stuff pile" on the side of the road and rolled it up onto the branches we had piled there. Then I unhooked and picked up the chain and promptly burned my right pinky finger on the portion of the chain which had been dragged across the cement with a stump on it and was exceptionally hot.

But the stump is out! Today I declare victory over and independence from the stump! (Ok, I still have to put the dirt back in the stump-hole...) Hope you've had a great 4th of July!